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Celestia 3-D space simulator 1.6.0 released

The Celestia developers have announced the release of version 1.6.0 of their cross-platform 3-D astronomy program. The application displays interactive objects, from artificial satellites to entire galaxies, in three dimensions using OpenGL. Version 1.6.0 is a major application update and includes several bug fixes, updates and new features.

The release now features the inclusion of 'planetshine' (light from secondary sources), new symbols for locations, improved celestial coordinate grids and new reference marks, such as the Planetographic grid and VisibleRegion. In addition to changing Pluto's class to a dwarf planet, Eclipse rendering has been improved and the code that handled stars has been updated, allowing stars to be placed more than 16k light years from Earth. The 1.6.0 release includes over 20 bug fixes, code optimisations and several platform-specific changes.